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For all those confused...

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Here is a slightly more technical read with illustrations as well.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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I think what a lot of people fail to realise is that the big deal over anamorphic has little to do with widescreen televisions. If you have a regualr television anamorphic will be immensely sharper and higher in resolution since there is no disk space being eaten up by two hours+ of black bars.
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But some of that extra resolution is eaten up when your player removes every 4th line of the image so that it will display properly on your 4x3 TV. Nevertheless, anamorphic transfers by and large look better on any display.

Princess Leia: I happen to like nice men.
Han Solo: I'm a nice man.

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Black bars eat up less disc space than does an expanded image region. I mean, it's a big static region of a digitally pure, unchanging color. It's a compressor's dream.
"It's the stoned movie you don't have to be stoned for." -- Tom Shales on Star Wars
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.
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Originally posted by: zombie84
I think what a lot of people fail to realise is that the big deal over anamorphic has little to do with widescreen televisions. If you have a regualr television anamorphic will be immensely sharper and higher in resolution since there is no disk space being eaten up by two hours+ of black bars.


I'm gonna have to disagree with you here. The image you will see on a 4:3 TV will be the same resolution with either an anamorphic or letterboxed widescreen DVD (when viewing in OAR). Those who have 4:3 TVs will possibly be better off with a letterboxed DVD for the reason Scruffy gives.
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THX is correct. Anamorphic DVDs suffer on a 4x3 TV.

[EDIT] Dammit!

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
THX is correct. Anamorphic DVDs suffer on a widescreen TV.


HUH????
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I'm guessing you mean on a 4:3 TV, MBJ?
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Scruffy and THX: Wouldn't 4:3 TVs benefit from the anamorphic video ever so slightly due to the fact that the letterboxing is handled via the DVD player and not just a lower resolution letterboxed version being spit out natively?

Aside from whether or not anamorphic matters in a 4:3 world, everything else is released anamorphic, and it's insulting to know that the extra resolution wouldn't be available with this release even if it did matter.

But seriously, I'd like to know more about the anamorphic stuff. Looked stuff up on the Digital Bits about it earlier today, and most of the technical stuff flew over my head.
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Originally posted by: darkhelmet
Scruffy and THX: Wouldn't 4:3 TVs benefit from the anamorphic video ever so slightly due to the fact that the letterboxing is handled via the DVD player and not just a lower resolution letterboxed version being spit out natively?


Actually an anamorphic DVD shown on a 4x3 TV, one that's not capable of vertical compression (some Sony sets are capable of this), would at best be equivalent to a high quality non-anamorphic DVD shown on the same TV. In order for a DVD player to show a correctly proportioned picture from an anamorphic mastered DVD on a 4x3 display, it must remove information to reduce the vertical dimension of the picture. If the DVD player does a perfect job of removing the excess information, the amount of picture information remaining would be equal to that of a non-anamorphic DVD.

TV sets with vertical compression change the proportion of height to width by changing the scanning of the electron gun within the picture tube. In this way no picture information is lost, but the vertical dimension of the picture is shortened. So the picture quality would be equivalent to a similar wide screen TV, although the picture may be smaller.

I offer this information hesitantly, because I'm a big proponent of anamorphic DVD's, and widescreen formats as the future of TV is widescreen. Widescreen more closely fits theater formats.

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Originally posted by: darkhelmet
Scruffy and THX: Wouldn't 4:3 TVs benefit from the anamorphic video ever so slightly due to the fact that the letterboxing is handled via the DVD player and not just a lower resolution letterboxed version being spit out natively?

The short answer is no. The majority of 4:3 TVs will actually produce a worse picture from an anamorphic DVD than a letterboxed one (as Skyranger stated above, there are some exceptions). This is because of the low quality on-the-fly scaling done by the TV to reduce the disc's vertical resolution in order to preserve the movie's proper aspect ratio. Add to this the increased compression that may be required for the anamorphic video and the result is, if you have a 4:3 TV, you're better off with letterboxed.
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Skyranger and THX: Thanks for the break-down.
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"The short answer is no. The majority of 4:3 TVs will actually produce a worse picture from an anamorphic DVD than a letterboxed one"

Agreed. My neighbor has a Sony WEGA, and when I compared the two displays (4x3 and anamorphic within the 4x3), there was a slight loss of detail. The picture looked almost identical, but small details were lost, and there was more stair-stepping - although I knew what to look for. My neighbor couldn't tell the difference.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Small nitpick: Star Wars, like any Widescreen presentation of a 2.35:1 film, will still have black bars, but only to matte the picture down to 16:9, not to 4:3.
I am fluent in over six million forms of procrastination.
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Technically, to get it to 720X480.

[EDIT] I think this thread has official defeated its own purpose.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Huh. I didn't know anamorphic looked not quite as good as letterbox on a 4:3 set. By that logic I should actually get this new release, then, because I only have a 4:3 20-inch tv to begin with.

I'm as upset as anyone about the non-anamorphic business, because I most definitely plan on getting a ginormous widescreen display as soon as I live on my own and can afford it (I like thinking long-term on this stuff, lol). I s'pose this will be all right for me now, though I'm still not at all pleased.
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First of all, it's not that bad - but technically it's true. (Like I said, I knew what to look for, and even then, it wasn't visible across the entire screen - just very fine details.) The DVD player must remove resolution to get the picture to fit on a 4x3 TV. Toshiba players did this by removing every fourth line. I don't recall how Sony did it.

Secondly, widescreen should be ubiquitous by the end of this decade, so while the OT DVDs will probably look fine on your current TV, they'll look very dated on your new TV.

You will wonder why the picture looks soft, and might even blame it on your new TV.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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I'm assuming the tradeoff isn't that bad, as all the widescreen movies I own are anamorphic, and I think they look great on my standard 4:3 television, better than anything else I've seen. It's not, is it? But I also have a widescreen computer with HD capabilities, so just for that, I feel that anamorphic would suit me better in the long and short term.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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No, they'll look fine....but the difference is, they will still look fine when presented on a future HD TV, and even better. The OT DVDs will look worse on the same TV.

For all the work Lucas went through to make sure theaters showed his films in the finest manner possible, this is such a tragedy.

[EDIT] Check out my new .sig.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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That's what I figured. And I know if they're not anamorphic, and I play them on my computer, they will only taken up 1/4 of my screen. Thanks for confirming, MeBe.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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I just wrote this "Guest Editorial" for T'bone's Star Wars Universe explaining the advantages of anamorphic transfers. It's even illustrated with a photo from Star Wars! I hope it clears up some of the confusion and I hope you all enjoy it.

Neil

Well at least the reversed surround channels have been addressed.